We had some sunshine relief in August! The backyard is still soggy though, and it does keep raining. But it feels less apocalyptic now the washing can dry. My garden is slowly springing back to life, but there is an aphid plague!
I'm really getting into pub trivia now with whatever random group I can. This group was a post-funeral church group that turned into women's trivia team. Meanwhile there is a lot of death around at the moment, my friend's father also died this month.
JK went away for a week and I was dog-carer! I tried to take him on a lot of long walks and finally explored down a path I've driven past. I found a bee swam there and reported it to the varroa response. Sweep also had some play time with a friend so I just picked him up from there after work. He was very upset at the start of the week, and I let him sleep on my bed once, but he got happier as the week went on.
This is some polite but borderline bacon-love.
I replaced my slow cooker (broken lid) with an Instant Pot and I've started to experiment with it! This ugly mess was a very fast very tasty spicy chicken burrito thing.
I also pressure cooked and crisped a whole chicken and then made soup.
Decided to make a change and move my stuff over 2 desks. It's not a big change but I guess it's some symbolism because I've sat in the same box for 8 years. It meant having a real clean up, getting to the bottom of the clutter, the way you do when you move house. It took a while but it feels good.
I'm also having a go at a standing desk, borrowed a desktop one. I'm standing a few hours each day.
A nice fun normal thing was to go to the Aroma festival! The sun was out and so was the wind, but it was just so long since we've done simple things like this. Even today the Olive Tree Markets are cancelled because of the bad weather. I used to like the rain but now its bad.
I went to Singleton and hung out a bit with Julia and Jonny, we enjoyed a really nice lunch at a cafe at the shops and it was nice to have adult sister time.
I still have a lot of appointments. But everything is going OK. My mouth ulcer thing is still there after 2 years but the immunologist has run all the tests and thinks it's looking better than it used to. I usually fit appointments around work but it does make life busy, so I took a whole day off for a newcastle appointment. I went in and then met JK and sweep at the dog beach and we had a walk, some brunch at Nobby's, and then went on our ways. I had a to do list like get a WWCC check, car washed, paint shop, plus some fun things. I ended up trying on clothes and buying some things at a boutique near the paint shop, and at the op shops near service nsw. I had to wait an hour for a slot at the car wash (had a free wash) so I had arvo tea at MRAG and looked through the art. Overall it was a lovely day with a lot of variety and productivity.
I did not enjoy being on an organising committee for a work event, and nearly every meeting I vented some frustration. This is unprofessional behaviour and is limiting my career prospects, plus it's not good character. I became extremely discouraged about this because it's a long running issue that I'm not making progress on, plus I felt a bit ripped off that all my managers only saw me in the meetings I hate, and not doing all the very good work that I do, so it felt like an unlucky assessment. But that's beside the point really, that I'm an impatient person and it comes out in a bad way.
The event went well, I went in during Saturday to do some bus marshalling and then went and hung out at Morpeth in the sun.
On Saturday night I lit candles and managed the sound and music which went well but meant I went up and down the stairs for 5 hours.
The event went well and everyone enjoyed it.
On the Sunday I was EXHAUSTED. A long week, emotional discouragement, late night, stairs climbing, I was done for. Unfortunately I had full band double practice and the usual weekend jobs to do and church music.
The exciting news is that I've done my first pilates at the studio. I've been looking for a change from home workouts for about a year, but my energy comes and goes, and I would like to do kickboxing but that would probably be EXHAUSTING, so I'm doing reformer pilates instead, it's in a new studio in Maitland which is very nice, and it's pretty affordable. I've done 2 classes so far and it seems to be at a good level to burn some muscles, but I've not been painfully sore DOMS the next day. I'm going to try and do a class on tuesday, wednesday, saturday and sunday.
My right shoulder has been painful all year but is finally pretty much better. Im still trying to keep up with the physio and have good posture so hopefully pilates helps with that.
And I've started checking out open homes near me. I'm in research phase. I think I want to see a financial planner though before I make a decision (I can't make a decision).
